Avatars of 500 Swedish corporate Twitter accounts

Back in February there was a discussion among a few bloggers about whether it was best for brands to have their logo or a face as avatar on Twitter. I commented that most of the Swedish corporate accounts on Twitter have logos as avatars, and many of them still manage to engage in meaningful conversations with stakeholders.

When you are about to decide on what avatar to choose for your corporate account, remember that many Twitter users are following hundreds of other accounts, who tweet several times per day. Their feeds become a continuing stream of updates from different sources and if you want to improve your chances of getting your tweets read, you should make your avatar easily recognizable. Since most users are individuals, my bet is that most avatars on Twitter are faces. That would mean that brands could easily stand out from the crowd if they branded their account in a way, logo or otherwise, that users quickly can recognize.

Do you need some inspiration? Well, to celebrate that the list of Swedish businesses on Twitter now has reached 500, here is a collection of avatars of 500 Swedish corporate Twitter accounts (in order of number of followers to the account). How many can you identify? (Note: the image is made out of two columns with 250 accounts in each, which for example means that Pingdom is #11. For completely accurate ranking, check the list.)